Cool Justice: Tony the Clam's wild ride with Frank Sinatra

Two teenagers -- on the lam from school during the Great Depression -- hit it off and became lifelong friends. One guy was from New Haven, the other from Hoboken, NJ.

They spent a lot of time at automats in Manhattan, getting decent meals cheap, and hanging out at the Paramount Theatre. There, they saw movies and live music, including the bands of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.

One day in 1935, while watching the Bing Crosby film "Pennies From Heaven," the Hoboken kid said, "Someday I'd like to sing like that guy."

In the beginning, Frank Sinatra and Tony Consiglio were just two kids hiding from the truant officer. Their friendship and adventures are chronicled in colorful detail by the poet and Gateway Community College Professor Franz Douskey of Hamden in the new book, "Sinatra and Me: The Very Good Years," due out Nov. 13 via audiobook leader Tantor Media. Tantor has branched out to print with its first non-fiction entry in this volume.

Douskey befriended Consiglio after hanging out for many years at the family stronghold, New Haven's famous Sally's Apizza.

The tale is told in Consiglio's voice, as elicited by Douskey from years of interviews while Consiglio was in his 80's. In the family's official obituary in 2008, Douskey is listed as the 90-year-old Consiglio's "dear and loyal friend" in the paragraph preceding Sinatra. Indeed, Douskey and Consiglio seemed to have engaged in some kind of Vulcan mind meld in which Sinatra, Consiglio and Douskey become one, whether the subject is Marilyn Monroe's last night on the planet, harassment of Sammy Davis Jr. by the Mississippi delegation at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles or Sinatra's volatile marriages with Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow.

As the novelist Wally Lamb remarked: "It's as if instead of reading a book, you're sitting across from Tony in a booth at Sally's Pizza, enjoying a slice and a glass of chianti as he regales you with his amazing anecdotes. I began reading 'Sinatra and Me' knowing the legend: I finished it knowing the man."

Douskey is known primarily for his books of poetry, most recently "West of Midnight," as well as "Indecent Exposure," "Sitting Across from Death," and "Rowing Across the Dark." His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Quarterly, The New Yorker and Las Vegas Life. His classic poems include the ode to Ted Williams, "The Splendid Splinter," and "I Wish I Was My Wife So I Could Be Married to Me."

Consiglio knew his way around before Sinatra became established as a singer, parlaying a connection with a radio broadcaster and Sally's patron into a job as a batboy with the New York Giants baseball team at the Polo Grounds. There was no salary, but he made his money doing odd jobs for players and selling souvenirs. Among the 40-some previously unpublished photos in the book is a shot of Consiglio with New York Yankee great Lou Gehrig in the dugout in 1939, the year Gehrig gave his farewell speech.

By the fall of 1940, Sinatra had risen from amateur hour performer to vocalist with the Harry James band and then the Tommy Dorsey band. Dorsey was playing at the Goffe Street Armory in New Haven and the band was hungry around 1 a.m. Tony Consiglio called his brother Sally, who kept the fire going in the ovens. The band and singers - a crew of more than 20 -- filled their bellies until around 4:30 that morning at Sally's.

Rare was the person who earned Sinatra's trust for any length of time. Sinatra nicknamed Consiglio "Tony the Clam" because he turned down money to talk about members of the inner circle including Marilyn Monroe.

"The Clam" opens up in this book, spilling the inside story on many historic events, including how Sinatra broke contracts with Harry James, easily, and Tommy Dorsey, not so easily. Along the way, Consiglio helps Sinatra daily for about 30 years in tasks ranging from proper wardrobes for performances to planning elements of John Kennedy's presidential campaign and inauguration.

Consiglio is referenced in a book by Judith Campbell Exner, the mistress of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana and JFK, and "Sinatra and Me" features a photo of a tuxedo-clad Consiglio toasting Exner in her prime. As he says in the book, "I drove her to the White House a few times when she was visiting President Kennedy, and believe me, it wasn't Avon calling."

Andy Thibault is a contributing editor for Journal Register Co.'s Connecticut publications and the author of Law & Justice In Everyday Life. He formerly served as a commissioner for Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission.